The Lost and the Lonely
by Draegon-Keeper
Summary: In a fit of anger, a young girl says 'the words'. Suddenly, her world is turned upside down.It'll become romance eventually! I stink at summaries, please, just Read and Review.
1. Default Chapter

The Lost and The Lonely  
  
Sadly, this chapter has no Jareth. The next one will, I promise!! Disclaimer: I own nothing but Judith, and her family. Everything else is copyright Jim Henson.. (I wanna own Jareth! *sob*)  
  
Chapter 1-  
  
The sky was slowly turning dark. It was currently a pinky blue, fading away to black. And on a small field outside of a tiny city in New York, a 17-year-old girl was running around carrying a field hockey stick. "Blast!" she muttered. "Just my luck. Everyone else gets to go home, but I had to miss that last goal." She mocked her coach, " '15 laps and you can go home, Judy.' How many times do I have to tell people not to call me Judy!"  
  
She finished up right after it got dark, and wondered what to do. After her parents had died 3 years past, she had loathed going to her aunt's house every evening, just to be yelled at. She walked down the silent streets, taking as long as possible to get home. Finally, she approached the looming white frame house badly in need of repair, her aunt's home. As soon as she entered her aunt spoke up, "Judith! Where have you been?! You promised to give John a bath! I needed you here 3 hours ago!" "I had field hockey practice," she retorted. "And I never promised, you ordered me to." She trod up the stairs, carrying her little cousin, John up the stairs. She plunked him in the tub and gave him a bar of soap. "Scrub," she ordered. "I'll be back in 5 minutes. She ran to her room, her sanctuary. Unlike the rest of the house, this room was spotless, and very organised. Judith flopped on her bed, and hugged her pillow. She felt something hard in the pillowcase, and pulled out a small red paperback book, the pages yellow around the edges. It was titled 'The Labyrinth'. "I wonder where this came from."she mused, and flipped through it. After a few minutes, she was enthralled.  
  
-------------------------------------------1 Hour Later--------------------- -----------  
  
"Judith!!! JUDITH!!!" Judith sprung from her bed, book in her hands. Her aunt's voice brought her back to reality. "I come upstairs, hoping John is in bed, and I find him in the tub, shrinkled like a prune! You were supposed to bath him!"  
  
Judith quickly id her book under her covers, and lied, "Practise was tough. I must have fallen asleep as soon as I laid down. I'll be right there!"  
  
She heard her aunt muttering about how ungrateful she was for 2 years of care and food. Judith walked over to her bookcase, and picked up a picture of her parents, the last perfect one she had. Her mother was young, 34, when she died, her father a few years older. She remembered her mother, Anna, as being perfect. Raised in London, she came to America as a French translator. She met Judith's father, David, at a small party of her friend's. They got married a year later.  
  
But then, 14 years later, a fire started in their comfortable 4 bedroom home. Propane tank exploded, the police told people. Happens quite a bit. Sad, but not a big deal.  
  
The next weeks of school were odd for Judith. Her parents' former lawyer was taking care of her parents' will. Everyone avoided her. Once one of the popular girls, she was labeled 'odd'. And now she was stuck with her aunt, who only took her in as to have a housekeeper.  
  
Judith put back the picture and trudged down the stairs, to find her aunt glaring at her in the living room. "You are grounded. No more social events, no more anything, until you leave my home."  
  
"It's not like I ever went out anyway!" Judith replied.  
  
"Well then. How about I write your coach a letter, telling her to take you off the team," her aunt smirked, knowing she had gotten Judith. "Yes, that will do nicely."  
  
"It's not FAIR," Judith shouted, and ran up the stairs, back to her room, her books, her sanctuary.  
  
She flopped on the bed, and picked up 'The Labyrinth'. She opened it to her page, and saw something that caught her eye a few paragraphs down.  
  
"I wish the Goblin King would come and take me away.. Right now."  
  
Yes, okay! I'm a terrible writer, but please review! I want to know if I should keep on writing this story!  
  
Thank you! *hug* 


	2. The Plot Thickens

Disclaimer: I own not the Labyrinth, nor Jareth, all I own is Judith and her belongings, not to mention her family. Boo, hiss, boo.  
  
A/N- Also, I have a small code that goes with the POV dividers. "|ooooooo|" means the paragraphs following are from Jareth's POV, whilst "~+~+~+~+~" indicates it's time for Judith's POV. Sorry this chapter took so long to be put up, there's not much to show for the time spent on it. |----------------------------------------------|---------------------------- -----------------------|  
  
The Lost and the Lonely : Chapter 2  
  
Lightning struck, thunder rumbled. Then all was silent. Judith lifted her head from her pillow, thinking how silly she was to have believed that The Labyrinth was anything but fantasy. She buried her head in her arms again, until she heard someone cough impatiently. She looked up, and at the foot of her bed was a man. A man, with white-blond hair, dressed in a cape and leggings. Judith blinked a few times, then pinched herself.  
  
"Y-you're.him, aren't you? You're the Goblin King."  
  
"Yes, Judith, I am 'him', as you so charmingly put it. I see you've read the book," he replied, indicating with his head towards her pillow, where the small leather-bound book lay.  
  
"B-but... You're. Not supposed to be real! You're just a character in a fantasy novel! Those words are just words! Nothing should have happened. You must be a figure of my imagination. I have to be dreaming."  
  
"Sarah," he thought to himself. "So much like Sarah, just from what I've seen." He snapped out of his memories and attended to the task at hand. He laughed bitterly. "Not real, am I?" He reached out his hand. Judith took it, and realised, with a sinking feeling in her stomach, that he was real. And that she was about to be taken away, to the castle beyond the goblin city. To be taken away, to the Underground.  
  
Judith then did the only thing that came to mind. She fainted.  
  
|oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo|  
  
Jareth sighed. He hated it when things turned out this way. He wished that just once a girl would come without him having to take her away whilst she was unconscious. He lifted Judith into his arms, and was surprised at how light she was. ~I'll have to make sure she gets proper meals~ he thought, then shook his head. She was too old to become a goblin, but he could find some use for her. But he was not going to get attached to this mortal, he told himself. Not with what happened last time. With Sarah. He thought of her constantly. She haunted him! He quickly shoved those thoughts away, and attended to the girl. With a flash of glitter, they were gone.  
  
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~  
  
Judith awoke with a start, wondering where she was, and why she was in such a soft bed. Then everything that had happened flooded back, and she stared at her surroundings. There was elegant, carved cherrywood furniture, that on closer inspection depicted fairlies and elves; and the room seemed to be a wave of different hues of blue and white, her favourite colours. Judith noticed she had a canopy bed, with sky-blue satin hangings. Her sheets were of the softest, snow-white cotton. She saw a large door, that seemed more glass than wood, that opened onto a balcony. An entire wall was deticated to books; huge bookshelves reached from the floor to the ceiling. Judtih noticed that on a table by a large picture window, a small feast was set up, piled with breakfast foods. A note by her plate read, "I am sorry not to welcome you to your room, but I thought it best you rested. Enjoy breakfast, and I will be with you soon after to discuss your situation. -Jareth, King of the Goblins and High Prince of the Fae Court, Next-in-line to the throne of the Underground."((A/N. I know! Long title, isn't it?)) "My situation," Judith thought aloud. "Of course. I wished myself away, not caring about the consequences. But.. The book described the Goblin King as being cold and cruel, not one to leave a girl breakfast in her room, or much less place her in a room of such beauty.." She remembered a quote, one she heard daily in her Historic Lit. class. "Things in print are very rarely accurate, even if by people with personal experience with the subject of it. They are biased, and have only seen what they experianced." Judith would try to keep an open mind, but right now, she was hungry. Looking out, she saw that no one was on the grounds, and piled her plate high. |oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooo|  
  
Jareth sat on his uncomfortable looking throne, and impatiently tapped his riding crop against one of his calf-high black boots. He reflected on what he knew of the girl, the crystle had given him a good understanding of her life, not names of her friends and family, but enough for him to understand why she decided to wish herself away. Then again, it always did. Every time one of the four books red books that told the truth about the Labyrinth found itself being read, Jareth found out. He then had time to organise thoughts about the reader, and discover as much about their lives as he wished. Usually, because of the slow pace of the readers, he had a lot of time until they, as always, wished themselves or others away. But this girl must have been so eager to get away from her home, she wished herself to the goblins as soon as she saw the paragraph telling of the words. Judith looked a lot like Sarah, same long brown hair, sparkling green eyes. IStop that,/I he ordered himself.ISarah is gone, she doesn't care about you, she's history. Attend to the girl at hand!/I Jareth had given her a room in the west tower, with a beautiful view of the Labyrinth. His room was across the hall, down a few doors. I What to do with her,/Ihe pondered. INo one to run the Labyrinth for her freedom, she has no purpose. /I Then he remembered state of his library/study, and winced. The king did not trust his goblin servants to clean there, they were much too clumsy and would wreak havoc upon his papers. He himself was too busy to bother, or so he convinced his concionse.I But, perhaps the girl could do it. Yes, that's the solution. It will buy me time to figure out what to do with her./I He looked into a crystle and noticed the object of his ponderings was dressed, finished breakfast, and was standing out on her balcony. She seemed to be singing.  
  
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~ +~  
  
II'll paint your mornings of gold, I'll spin you valentine evenings, though we're strangers till now, we're choosing our path between the stars; I'll lay my love between the stars./I Judith sang the song her mother sung to her as a child while looking out at the huge, ever-changing Labyrinth. She continued on to the refrain, and was startled to hear a male voice along with her own. She looked next to her, there stood the Goblin King, looking ever-resplendant in dark blue leggings, with a loose poets shirt opened ever so slightly, to show an odd gold pendant. She finished up the song, and looked up at him. "I thought this was a song my mother had made up to soothe me as a child,"she said. "I had no idea that others knew it as well." Jareth raised his eyebrows and replied, "I have only sung this song once, to a girl, a long time ago. Now I must ask you. Who was your mother?" Judith sighed. It was still painful to think of either one of her parents. "My mother. was Sarah Williams."  
  
|-----------------------------------------------|-------------------- ------------------------------|  
  
Icky chapter ending, I hope this whole "Sarah-is-my-mother" bit changes the story for the better.. But I may regret it. Well, next chapter should be up shortly.  
  
Please, leave a contribution in the little box. 


End file.
